The URBIS project: Vacant urban area classification and detection of changes

The Urban Land Recycling Information Services for Sustainable Cities (URBIS) project aims to identify and monitor the vacant and abandoned zones in large urban zones (LUZ). High resolution remotely sensed multispectral images will be employed along with the available in situ data to perform classification and multi-temporal change detection on European LUZ in order to facilitate urban redevelopment monitoring. The activity builds on the result of a previous Atlas project that produced high-resolution land use maps for 305 European LUZ and their surroundings (with population over 100.000 inhabitants). This paper focuses on the presentation of URBIS project objectives and scope, and the methodology applied by the research unit at the University of Genoa for classification and change detection of vacant urban zones performed within this project.